Thank you!
I like to use pencil thick wood and splice water sprout to water sprout or water sprout scion to branch tip. About 75% of my 30-40 peach and nect grafts took last season and the ones that failed were the thinnest wood. Plums were only a bit more successful.
I wait until trees are fully leafed out and keep the scion wood close to freezing in storage and tape the pieces tightly together and cover the scions entirely with a thin type of parafilm.
3 Likes
Olpea,
I think my failure was because I grafted scionwood on older wood of the existing trees. I remember you said to graft on last year wood (growth from last summer), not old wood. I grafted onto 2-4 years old branches/scaffolds with so little success.
1 Like
Good reminder Mamuang! I forgot to mention that.
Olpea,
That was my big mistake.
I watched too many grafting videos of apple and pear stump and assume I could stump graft peaches, too. Wrong.
Hmm, I nearly always do stump grafts and have had good luck with them. Bark graft is my standard choice on big stumps. The main constraint for me is that the temps are in the 70-805F highs for 2-3 days after, also to seal well. With that I usually have good luck.
I got the temp right but I grafted on stumps. So far, very little success. I did almost all bark graft.
I did apple and pears in cooler temp with both cleft and bark. I think almost all worked.
Let me throw out a few more hints for you, @mamuang. Make sure to completely seal the grafts, I use doc farwells. Another thing is you can do two rounds. Say you have a 2" diameter trunk - one day do two opposite each other, then maybe a week or so later on the next good spell of temps do 2 on the other two corners of a square. I will just cut through the parafilm or paint and pop the new ones right in.
Also when I cut the scion I make a “J” cut, start out with a fast taper then level off. It gives more cambium contact that way. And, I barely scrape the bark off the scion edges to help the contact be better - very light with the knife just to get the thin sheaf of bark off for maybe 1mm on the edge. Overall the goal is to make more cambium contact surface.
2 Likes
I’ve also successfully grafted onto older peach wood, but I’ve just found that there is something about succulent new red wood which helps my splice grafts.
I’ve found this especially true for budding. Older peach wood is much harder to successfully bud (chip or T-bud).
Scott and Mark,
I will try all the tips you have suggested. Thank you.
I’m absorbing! 
Thanks Olpea, Scott, Mamuang and many others for this very useful discussion…
I guess I had the stroke of luck here! I grafted 2 Mormon apricot scions onto my Elberta peach last year around the 70-80F that Scott mentioned. The graft locations were on the 2, 3 years old trunk at knee level. Both took, grew about 3" tall then one withered away while the survivor really, really took off. It grew more than 5 feet of material. This spring, I pruned it down to 1 foot to build up the trunk as a scaffold. I think it’ll grow more materials this year.
Tom
1 Like
I’m exhausted trying to sort it all out!
I had quite a few failures of bark grafts on my peach tree, especially grafting onto older wood. I did much better with W&T grafts onto younger wood. But that may be because my peach tree has sporadic canker, and some of the bark grafts got it. I also noticed that on the bark grafts I had failed to seal all the way down to the very end of the cut in the bark, and I think that’s where the infections started.
I have the same thing - i never have had a peach bud graft work on a shoot that was bigger than large pencil-sized.
There are some secrets of peaches that we don’t know yet…
Well I’m going to try some splice grafts this year onto one year wood thick as two pencils with one year scion wood the same diameter. I’ll let you know how the grafts do.
Just wondered if peach is harder than nectarine? This youtube video from Dave Wilson Nursery about top working their Goldmine nectarine with 2 months and 6 months follow ups. Their tree trunk must be at least 5 years old…
http://www.davewilson.com/community-and-resources/videos/how-graft-fruit-tree-0
http://www.davewilson.com/community-and-resources/videos/field-grafting-2-month-follow
http://www.davewilson.com/community-and-resources/videos/fruit-tree-grafting-6-month-follow
1 Like
I’m doing the same thing, so we’ll compare notes.
Old timers around here say that budding in summer is easier than w & t now. I grow seedlings of Elberta. They taste good and are said to get less disease than grafted. I haven’t had much luck with w and T.
John S
PDX OR
Thanks John, I have a huge Elberta and last year was its first year in 8 years to get brown rot. I love Elberta peaches!
1 Like
